Originally posted by: Nova
Simply put Naruto is a genin for a reason. The reason is that even though he has a ton of chakra, knows some very high level techniques, and is very creative in battle, he is also NOT good at some things. To become a chuunin you should be good at everything, to become a jounin you must be very good at everything.

I'll outline one situation where he isn't, there are more than one but I don't wanna type too much right now [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img] ...

" A ninja needs to be able to read underneath the underneath. "
Naruto doesn't do this, and Naruto doesn't REALLY even understand this. I like naruto alot, i'm not trying to say hes weak, and in my other post I say alot of positive stuff about him. A perfect example of this is that Naruto got past the first part of the chuunin exam on guts and luck alone. If there actually had been a 10th question he woulda been toast and this discussion would have been over. If he had tried to cheat he probably would have been another person caught. He had a blank sheet, he couldn't cheat without getting caught, he hadn't developed those skills. And back to the original reason, he didn't even realize he was supposed to cheat. Now obviously its been awhile since then and Naruto is becoming more powerful every episode, but the facts remain that some of Naruto's basics are still not up to Chuunin level. And whether he could deafeat a Chuunin, Jounin, or Hokage in a head on battle, before they are going to promote a young excelling kid, they are going to make him round out all of his skills. That includes his Taijutsu techniques which could use some work, his Ninjutsu which is definately his strong point, and his Genjutsu skills, along with his ability to "understand the situation". Even though Naruto may come up with inventive, and unpredictable combinations of techniques he still is just learning how to read whats going on around him.
Granted Naruto's skills arent up to par in certain respects, but he passed the first exam for a reason. He couldn't figure out that he was supposed to cheat, nor did he even want to when given the chance, but he knew there was no point in giving up. I'm sure that far smarter people have been elimated for not realizing that. Another thing to realize is that, even in the first exam, teamwork was important. Sasuke and Sakura knew that Naruto had no chance in the exam, and they should have been able to make up for it, someway somehow, specially considering that his failure meant their failure. Consider Rock Lee. He had no way of getting the answers...on his own. His team managed to slip him the answers. So you can't really say he doesn't deserve to be a chuunin based on that. You have to look at the overall. He performed well in the second part of the exam. He's the one that drew sasuke out of his fear of dying, which is something that needed to be done, and he's the one that figured out how to beat the goop ninjas. Also, when sasuke came up with the password at the beginning of the test, I'd be willing to bet that Naruto was fully aware that he wasn't expected to remember it based on how readily he said he didn't remember.
Then there's the third exam. The examiners said that naruto shouldn't be chuunin because he doesn't know when to give up, and that if he were leading troops into battle, it would cost too many lives (or something somewhat to that effect). Well, that's a wrong of looking at the picture. First of all, Naruto has a demon in him, what neiji did to him was nowhere near all that he could handle, so truth be told, he wasn't given a reason to give up. To drive the point in, he had enough remaining chakra to go and beat shit out of gaara after his match, which mind you, occured in the same day. Another thing is, how do you predict how someone is going to react when leading a group into battle based on how they act when they only have themselves to consider? People generally think and act differently in both situations. So, the third exam is not a good indicator of the leadership qualities of a ninja, and that being the case, naruto performed not just well, but brilliantly. Overall, he deserves to be a chuunin.